Amy Bishop’s sanity at issue

Convincing jurors that Braintree native Amy Bishop was insane and has no recollection of shooting to death three people and seriously injuring three others will be a tall order for her defense lawyer.

By Dennis Tatz

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Dennis Tatz

Posted Feb. 22, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 22, 2010 at 10:11 PM

By Dennis Tatz

Posted Feb. 22, 2010 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 22, 2010 at 10:11 PM

» Social News

Could biology professor Amy Bishop have been so enraged that she doesn’t remember killing three colleagues and wounding three others during a shooting rampage at an Alabama university?

It’s possible, but not likely, according to local experts.

“It happens, rarely,” psychologist Ronald Ebert, a partner with Psychological Services Inc. in Braintree, said of the kind of memory loss described in the Bishop case. “If it does happen, it’s because of alcohol, drugs or there is a head injury.”

Bishop, a Braintree native, told her attorney Roy W. Miller she doesn’t remember opening fire on anyone at the University of Alabama at Huntsville on Feb. 12.

The 45-year-old Bishop, who is charged with capital murder and three counts of attempted murder, was apparently upset that she had been denied tenure and was about to lose her job.

Miller said he intends to argue insanity in his defense of Bishop.

“I don’t know what else I’ve got,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday. “It wasn’t self-defense. It wasn’t ‘somebody else did it.’ I think she has some real severe mental problems.”

Asked how often an insanity defense is successful in the Alabama courts, Miller replied: “Rarely.”

The shootings sparked interest in a Dec. 6, 1986, incident in which Bishop, then 21, killed her 18-year-old brother, Seth, with a shotgun blast at the family’s home in Braintree. The shooting was ruled accidental.

Authorities in Massachusetts are looking into why Bishop failed to face charges at the time for allegedly waving the shotgun at two men at an auto body shop while demanding a getaway car and having a brief standoff with police after shooting her brother.

Ebert, who has evaluated people charged with crimes, said a temporary memory loss could be the result of rage.

“It kind of overwhelms them, but they ultimately do remember,” Ebert said. “It’s not the kind of thing you want to remember. With help, they are able to recall gradually.”

Ebert said Bishop seems to have a history of anger in reported confrontations with others in her past.

“You see this in people with a personality disorder,” Ebert said. “They can’t tolerate criticism. This (the shootings) was an extreme. There is always the possibility of mental illness.”

Psychologist John Sheff of Hingham, who deals with clients on an out-patient basis, said selective memory could be the result of a head injury in a car crash or trauma from a brutal sexual attack.

Sheff said there are also those who simply try to block out an event in their lives.

Norwell criminal defense lawyer Stephen L. Jones said selective memory in the legal world is a misnomer.

Page 2 of 2 - “It’s just an absence of memory of the event,” Jones said. “There is a possibility she (Bishop) was in the middle of a psychotic episode and she can’t remember anything.”

Jones, who taught a class in psychology and the law for a number of years at Boston College, said memory loss comes up more often in connection with victims, particularly children, than it does with those accused of a crime.

“There are certain exams that can be done to determine whether or not it’s a plausible scenario,” Jones said.

Jones said an insanity defense could pose an uphill battle for Bishop’s lawyer.

The defense would have to show Bishop did not know right from wrong when she pulled the trigger or that she clearly suffered from a mental disease or defect.

“It’s very, very rare for an insanity defense to be successful,” Jones said.